Coffee Cadence
by noisee
Summary: [Before the misfortune ends, it rubs it in your face.] They were the most important people in the world to him, next to Kira. Or, maybe, because of Kira. Either way, the Divine One came first. Always.


_Before the misfortune ends, it rubs it in your face._

They were the most important people in the world to him, next to Kira. Or, maybe, because of Kira. Either way, the Divine One came first.

Always.

**Coffee Cadence**

* * *

_x__sugar packet_

* * *

Cool and composed. Nothing shook up number one. 

_Light! Your friend brought over your notebook!_

He's sitting at the table in the seat he usually does, soaking in over eighteen years' worth of familiarity. A veritable buffet is set up on the dining table before him, each dish still steaming.

He picks up his bowl in his left hand and a pair of chopsticks in his right, watching the tendrils of heat waft upward, curling in empty space and reach out to dissipation.

_It's warm, right?_

Takes a bite. There's rice, he can see that much, but…

_warm… right?_

but what kind of a meal is simply rice? He sets the bowl down silently, the chopsticks neat beside it. He rests his fists on the tabletop and stares bleakly at the massive spread.

Every dish is rice; every dish is white, a steaming landscape of snow. The thought registers somewhere in his mind as something half ridiculous.

His eyes fall on the coffee mug, a gaping, sable hole in the domestic swamp of etiolation. Gingerly, he lifts the beverage and tips it to his lips.

"How is it?"

She's standing on the other side of the table, clad in the black, skirted corset she was wearing when they first met. Her hands are clasped between her breasts, skin so pale against the somber lace wrapped around her arms. Wide eyes pin his, half-hidden beneath a flaxen fringe, swimming with hopeful waters she dare not tread. Delicate brows bunch together, the bridge over her pools of wishful thinking.

He smiles, and the tension eases just a bit, so he smiles a little more.

"It's sweet," he lies, because it feels like the right thing to say- and it is: she lights up and it's _radiant_, like the sun coming forth from the clouds.

"_Ohh_, Misa's so glad!" She squeals, relief clear in her soprano timbre, "she worked so hard for Light!"

He likes it when she looks like that, like everything in the world is rainbows and stars and strawberries. It gives him the warmth so curiously absent from the table.

"Thank—"

He hears the static tap of the television set turning on behind him, and shifts in his seat to face it.

The screen displays a succession of his victims, faces weathered with trials unknown, wrinkles running like furrows over their ragged planes. He doesn't think they've ever been broadcast looking so derelict, but this is the only way he can remember them.

Sunken eyes that should be closed.

His hand is shaking. The murky liquid jumps and jerks within its ceramic confines. He sets the mug on the table and sits correctly in his chair. She appears to be staring at him, but her eyes are cast in shadow.

He forgot what he was going to say.

"Misa…"

_Everything is grey._

That was her voice, but her mouth didn't open- did it? He can't tell anymore.

"Misa—"

_everything_

No- _no_. He still needs to tell her, tell her at least… Tell her _what_? What was he going to say? Something about… Something about…

_It's useless._

It's _not_. He just needs some time to think; he'll figure it out. He wants to tell her that he's… Oh, it's lost. It's lost and his coffee's getting cold. He sighs and leans his wrists against the table's edge, frowning at them.

He's missing his watch.

"Mi—"

_Mi… what?_

He looks up, confused. There's a girl standing on the other side of the table, an argent spectre swathed in denigration. He can barely separate her from the pearly air she's drowning in.

It looks like she's praying.

_How is it?_

How is- How is what?

He looks down at the table, at the display of assorted plates and bowls. They're all empty- he knows this because he _knows_ something is missing, he just can't figure out what.

"Mm…"

_grey_

His lips cling to the eternal suspension of a word lost upon the tip of his tongue.

_everything_

He should have told her, he should have; if he hadn't held her so far away, she might have been able to help him, she might have smiled more _he should have smiled more_. He should have been the light as he was christened, if only for her. He should have said everything that

_everything is_

He should have said everything is

_everything_

Everything is gone. At least, _something's_ gone, and he knows this because he _knows_ something is missing, he just can't…

He just can't…

He just can't _what_?

He's sitting at the table, cool and composed (even though he's _not_), just like the shapes before him, just like the static _snap-snap-snap_ping somewhere in the space he's left behind.

He's sitting at a table, and everything is grey.

* * *

_x__sugar cubes_

* * *

_Light-kun._

He opens his eyes.

There are clouds in the sky, lucid, untouchable cotton puffs meandering lazily above the canvas of the sky. The blue is so bright, but he can't see the sun anywhere.

"When I've finished setting up here, we can play."

The speaker stands on the other side of the net, building a precarious stack of teacups and saucers in the centre of his court. He holds each piece of chipped china in that careful, gentle way reminiscent of a mysophobe. All-seeing eyes traced with weariness never leave his own, though the hands continue expertly, never missing a beat.

"Almost done, Light-kun."

He takes another survey of the milieu, lips pressed into a thin line. The clay beneath his feet stretches on for ages, seeming to bend and distort in a convex curve by the sheer length, a fence spanning the hemisphere of a planet, a cage within which he has ample room to roam but nothing beyond.

"Claustrophobia, Light-kun."

No, that's not right.

"Agoraphobia, Light-kun."

That's not right, either.

"We're ready, Light-kun."

He looks up. Deneuve stands in front of his teacup tower, an apple in one hand and a spoon in the other. Deneuve readies himself; the apple bounces off the ground and back into his hand with the elastic ease of an actual tennis ball.

"Light-kun."

Deneuve hasn't looked away, hasn't

"No, that's not right, Light-kun."

Coil hasn't looked away, hasn't blinked, hasn't

"That's not right, either, Light-kun."

Ryuzaki hasn't

"No, Light-kun."

Ryuga hasn't

"_No_, Light-kun."

_He_ hasn't opened his mouth, and that's only slightly disconcerting.

"…-kun."

He puts his hands on his hips (for lack of a better occupation) and cocks his head.

"How am I supposed to play without a racket, L?"

He smiles that smile that creeps onto his face, curving up his lips and brightening his features. His enemy stares at him with the wide-eyed wonderment of a child, incongruent with his manic, teeth-bearing grin.

When he speaks, his voice is level, each word measured and balanced and enunciated, bouncing from his tongue like the apple off the clay.

"You must use your _head_, Kira."

The tower of teacups falls, shattering noiselessly and spectacularly on the other side of the net. The opposite court holds a boy with a raven's wing of hair and eyes embossed by bruise-like fatigue imprinted upon the surrounding skin, sitting in an almost fetal crouch. The boy's index finger hooks onto his bottom lip, anchoring it in a bend that displays tender, private flesh.

This person, this strange stranger watching gives for all intents and purposes the visage of a particularly precocious child, but the only image in his mind's eye is that of grinning death. A naked skull is observing him, surrounded by the skeletal remnants of opalescent crystal.

The clouds are moving so _fast_.

"Aren't we going to play, Kira-kun?"

No. The game has been played through.

"No game, Kira-kun?"

It's been played through, and through, and through.

"Tired, Kira-kun?"

Yes. Of the game that's done. Of the field with the leaden grass.

"Kira-kun?"

He's never liked the sound of a _k_, or any hard consonant. Harsh noises made by guttural force, ripping the sound from the back of one's throat in a primitive attempt to present some useless message- but, mostly…

"Kira-kun."

… he's never liked the _k_s.

"Kira-kun."

He can't look at those eyes anymore, so he cranes his neck and stares up at the sky. The clouds are gone- or maybe they've simply accumulated to blot out the sky. Whatever the case, he sees a pearly blanket that stretches for as far as his eyes can reach.

"Kira-kun."

Someone is speaking; he looks back to the opponent side and sees only the omnipresent opposite, a wall of white. There are two circular voids in the air, holes of sloe in a wan world of monochrome.

"Kira-kun."

He can't tear his gaze away. The discs of coal are fading, and he can't tear his gaze away.

"Kira-kun."

He blinks. His eyes are so tired. What was he staring at? There's nothing to see, but…

There's nothing to see, period. He's just tired, he's been putting too much stress on his mi…

On his…

"Kira-kun."

He can't concentrate. His ears are filled with a harsh snap he cannot place. There's too much str—

"Kira-kun."

There's too much…

There's too much. There just is. There's too much, there's…

He doesn't know what he's doing. Is he standing? Is he even _upright_? Is he even…

Too much.

_not enough, L—_

Too _much_.

"Kira-kun."

He closes his eyes.

* * *

_x__sugar bowl_

* * *

_Isn't this the worst possible development, Light?_

Agitation, that's what it is. He feels agi—

and just like that, it's gone, stolen from the now fragile grasp of his mind. He's never felt so…

"Why bother? They'll just take it away from you again."

_Take what away?_

"You know…"

_Oh, yes, the…_

It's gone again.

"What's gone again?"

_You know, the…_

Somewhere, something stops.

"Where?"

Somewhere.

"What?"

_Stop that._

"If you would just try and _think_, if you would try and _answer_ my _questions_, maybe…!"

_Maybe…?_

Silence. Just like everything else.

_Not everything else, please don't… Maybe? Maybe!?_

"… What may be?"

_What?_

"I'm lost."

_What?_

"I'm…"

Trailing off into the void. Everything else, trailing off into the void. It's only him and who he is.

"… I…"

Who he is is nobody.

"… ah—"

Just like that.


End file.
